


Into The Wounds We Go

by itsnotmyfault



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Angst, Brainwashing, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Heavy Angst, Minecraft but real life, Minor Character Death, Mystery, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Other, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Respawn Mechanics, Rituals, Techno Whump am i right bois, Torture, Trauma, Violence, amensia, au where there are gods but they just kinda fuck around, kiddnapping, listen theres so little techno whump on here ive resorted to feeding msyelf, not the fun kind, there is not a speck of fluff in here you guys im sorry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-26
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:13:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27200257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itsnotmyfault/pseuds/itsnotmyfault
Summary: 'And when the scarifice is given up, and the world stills...''All will hail the blood god.'-In which Techno finds himself in deep halls filled with dead bodies he doesn't recognize, trapped in a world he can't leave, while his family scrambles to get him out.
Relationships: Dave | Technoblade & Phil Watson, Dave | Technoblade & Toby Smith | Tubbo, Dave | Technoblade & TommyInnit, Dave | Technoblade & Wilbur Soot, Dave | Technoblade & Wilbur Soot & TommyInnit & Phil Watson, Family Dyamic, No Romantic Relationships (ew), Other Character Tags To Be Added - Relationship, Sleepy Bois - Relationship
Comments: 113
Kudos: 670





	1. Wake

**Author's Note:**

> TECHNO ANGST TECHNO ANGST TECHNO AGNST- 
> 
> look yall, i know i should be working on wtcwb, but there's so little techno angst on here i can'tttt
> 
> i understand you all are children and project onto tommy and tubbo way to much, but still. sometimes i feel like the only techno simp out here/j
> 
> On a more serious note, This fic will be getting dark. Very, very dark. So if you are disturbed easily, I'd suggest you'd turn back now while you still can.

He’s leaning on a wall. 

He doesn’t know how, considering he was unconscious for who knows how long, never mind that he doesn’t know how he fell unconscious in the first place. But he’s aware now. 

He’s also aware that he’s holding something. Something grey and small, shaped like a box. It’s got bumps on it. Bumps he can push in. Bumps he’s pushing in, as if he’s entering a code of some sort. He doesn’t know why he’s pressing or how he knows to, but the world is such a blur at this point that he can’t bring himself to care. 

After a couple presses, the box begins to vibrate. He clutches it tighter, as if he’s afraid it’s going to disappear or something. Eventually, it stops, but another sound comes out of it. 

_ “...Hello?”  _

It’s a voice. He should probably respond to it. 

“..Hi.”

The box is silent for a while, and that leaves him time to get his bearings. The world around him is a blur of red and grey, especially around his feet. He feels up the clothes he’s wearing, thin and soft and stained with more red. 

_ “T-techno?” _ the box says after a few moments of silence. He frowns. That word sounds familiar to him in a way he can’t recall. Then again, he can’t recall a lot of things right now. 

“Hi, I’m um, I’m here. Who is this?” he asks into the box. It does click that it’s not the voice of the box, but something else. Something else using the box. God, when did the world become so confusing?

_ “You don’t remember me?” _ the voice is a bit more panicked now, and he doesn’t like it. The voice does sound vaguely familiar, but at this point, everything is vaguely familiar. 

“I... I’ve heard your voice before, but I can’t remember where,” he answers into the box, eyes transfixed on it. 

All of a sudden, there’s a sound of things moving and it takes him a second to realize it’s coming from the box and not his own surroundings. 

_ “Techno, what the fuck?!”  _ another, much more familiar voice speaks. He blinks. This voice has a name. A name he knows. Something beginning with T. Something like-

“Thomas? Is that your name?” 

_ “Oh my god, Techno. Are you- are you fucking high?!”  _

At this point, he has no choice but to assume his name is Techno. It has a nice ring to it. But ‘Thomas’ still doesn’t sound right, if the tone of the new voice’s reaction was anything to go by. He narrowed his eyes, trying to concentrate and remember, and also ignore his throbbing headache. 

“No...no...your name is..Tom? Tommy?” That sounds much better, and closer. 

_ “Oh my fucking god- ok yes, I’m Tommy. You remember me?”  _

He-Techno frowns. He had to know this voice- Tommy from somewhere, but everything was such a blur he could only recall vague shapes and bright colors. 

“You….your hair is yellow, right?” 

_ “...Techno, where the fuck are you?” _

Techno looks around. He can’t really tell. The world around him is still just red and grey and black. “It’s...really dark here. There’s a lot of red stuff too.”

There’s a pause. Techno hopes he hasn’t scared Tommy off. He blinks rapidly, trying to see better so he can give the voice a better answer. He doesn’t want to be alone, not in this world of dark colors and blurred shapes. 

_ “Techno, do you remember Hypixel?”  _ The other voice- the one without a name- asks. 

Hypixel sticks out. It’s the most familiar out of all the words he's had thrown at him today. Hypixel makes him feel a strange warmth in his chest, a feeling of isolation slowly being drained by flashes of greens and browns, browns he was...proud of?

“Hypixel...it’s big right? Really big. There’s a lot of green there and brown… brown circles. They had a name right? It started with a… a…”

_ “Do you mean potatoes?”  _

Techno’s eyes light up. “Yeah, yeah! I grew a lot of them! I worked really hard on them, I think. I was fighting someone… someone with them. Someone blue.” 

There’s a mix between a laugh and a sigh on the other side. _ “Can you log out of the world you’re in right now? Wait- do you know what logging out means?” _

His hands are already drifting to the bump with the door symbol on it. He knows how to. He presses the bump. 

Silence. 

He presses it again, a strange feeling rising in his chest. A hammering feeling, increasing with each useless press. 

“I don’t think it’s working,” he says after a while. Maybe he’s doing it wrong. “Is it the bump with a door?” 

There’s no answer from the box, only mumbling. Eventually, Tommy’s voice returns.  _ “Techno, do you know where you are right now? Like, do you have a name of the place? Something?”  _ He sounds desperate.

Name? There’s a name for this place? He looks around again. The world is beginning to clear, his eyes finally registering the bars in front of him. 

Wait, bars?

He tries to walk towards them, tries to see, but something’s holding onto his leg. He turns, to see a black chain keeping him to the wall. Walls that are covered with blood, and Techno wonders if it's his. Wouldn’t that mean he’s bleeding? Shouldn’t he be feeling pain? 

_ “Techno? You still there?”  _

He turns back to the box. “I’m… chained up somewhere. I think. It’s really dark down here.” 

There’s another pause, and suddenly Techno is desperate to have the voice back. He needs support. The world around him doesn’t make sense. Nothing makes sense. Why can’t he leave? He wants to leave. He needs to leave. 

_ “Techno, what’s the last thing you remember?”  _

His mouth opens, then closes it again. His mind is muddled. The world before seems more of a dream. He closes his eyes, trying to focus when-

**“Death of the physical can be combated. Death of the mind is forever permanent.”**

Techno screams. 

There are glass shards digging into his hands, the floor below him is covered in nails, and his insides feel as though there’s acid running through his veins, setting fire and melting away his body every second. 

He drops the box to the floor, sobbing in pain as his nerves continue to burn. There are knives in his back, making every movement more and more difficult. He feels like he’s burning and freezing at the same time, being stabbed and impaled and every drop of blood is being drained from him, he can’t hear, he can’t see, he can’t scream-

_ “Techno?! Techno, are you there?! Techno!”  _

The voice just makes everything hurt more his ears are bleeding and stinging and he’s crying, begging, please make it stop, please for the love of god make it stop-

And then the darkness reclaims him, and he’s more than happy to fall asleep again. 


	2. Breathe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Techno wakes up again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so, funny story. I wrote this part before the MCC 12 teams and been annouced, and I think I might've accidently manifested techno not signing up. Oh well. Get your rest king. We'll just rewatch all of your skywars videos in the meantime.

Techno would spend days without contacting anyone. That’s just how he worked. 

He didn’t log onto the Dream SMP for a while. That’s normal. 

He didn’t log into Hypixel for a while. That’s less normal, but he could just be craving his alone time a lot more. Farming potatoes must get boring after a while, right?

He didn’t sign up for MCC. That’s when Phil started getting worried. 

He asked Dream the last time he had seen Techno. The masked man hesitates, running over every interaction with the pinkette in his mind. Dream hasn’t seen Techno for a month. 

Neither has Phil. 

He goes around asking, and all the answers are the same. Techno hasn’t been in the public eye for a month. A part of Phil wanted to deny everything, that Techno was fine and just training, that he had just forgotten to tell anyone he was heading off. But Phil knows Techno too well for that excuse to work. 

Techno craves his isolation, but he craves his fame even more. 

It gets to the point where Phil broke into Simon’s office, demanding to see Techno’s login records. The man didn’t refuse (thankfully) but what they find only worried Phil even more.

Techno hasn’t logged in for a month. Techno hasn’t been  _ anywhere  _ for a month. 

Phil’s full blown panic switch flicked on. 

He asked Wilbur and Tommy to help, and they did their best, but there was no trace of him anywhere. Every server he looks in, even the ones Phil is sure Techno would’ve showed up on if he was training. No luck. Every lead, every sever, every claim leads to a dead end. 

In the end, the world mourns Techno. And then it moves on. 

Phil felt exhausted. Physically and emotionally. Techno’s disappearance is now a permanent weight in his mind, a rock weighing him down every time he tries to fly again. In the night, whispers of how much he might’ve missed plague his dreams. What were the signs? What did he miss? How did he fail so badly? 

Those questions will forever haunt him, he knows. He makes a point to spend more time with Wilbur and Tommy, silently begging them to never slip away, not like the other. They don’t argue, they answer his questions with an ease that Phil can’t help but feel jealous of. As if someone they cared about didn’t disappear off the face of the planet. As if he hadn’t been missing for half of a year. 

And then, during the six month, he gets that oh-so-important call from Tubbo. 

_ ‘Phil, we just got a call from Techno.’  _

If only he knew how far he’d have to go to get him back. 

* * *

The second time Techno wanders back into the world of the living, his eyes readjust to the dark much quicker. He remembers a lot more too, the conversation with Tommy, the fact that he’s chained to a wall, the way he fainted-

Ugh. It hurts to even think about. He unconsciously grips his arm. Wait- where was the box?

He shoots up, yanking the chain around his leg. That box was his only connection to anyone. It was possibly his only way out. He scans the area, narrowing his eyes to try and spot it. 

And he does, eventually. Right next to the bars. Right out of his reach.

Does life love his suffering or just hate him in general?

Even though he knows it's futile, he pulls against the chain around his leg and desperately reaches for the box. His nails just barely touch the corner of it, and the lingering feeling of helplessness he had before has grown exponentially. With nothing else to pass the time, he leans up against the wall and runs through everything he knows. 

His name is Techno. He’s chained to a wall in some dark, weird place- dungeon! He’s chained up in a dungeon. There’s blood all around the walls, both outside and inside the cage. He has a box that allows him to talk with someone called Tommy that he’s supposed to know (he  _ does know, he has to remind himself, he just can’t remember at the minute-)  _ and a… friend of Tommy’s? That’s his guess. He feels really out of it right now, his limbs feeling more like lead than anything else. Every movement he makes is sluggish and uncoordinated, and he feels like this body isn’t his. Like this mind isn’t his. 

He stops looking inward and rather at the poorly lit room around him. There are stains of blood even outside the cell, as if something went on a rampage. There are also heaps of...something dotting the outside of his cell. Clothes, maybe? The only light in the room is a lamp on a shelf on the other side of the room, so it’s hard to see. Almost all of them have dark, red robes, like a religious group or something. It’s almost like the red decorating the walls. Almost like- 

**“Death of the physical can be combated. Death of the mind is forever permanent.”**

The horrible pain starts up again. He gasps for air, curling up on the floor and twitching every which way as needles start to dig in again and every slight jerk against the ground leads to more nails sticking into him, and it hurts, it hurts, oh god he can’t do this again-

_ CRACK!  _

The sound is loud and painful, like everything else, and he curls up into himself even more as his ears begin to ring again. Strangely, the pinpricks dancing his nerves seem to disappear, and even the sudden ringing seems to die down more and more. 

Once the pain has ended enough for him to think straight, he realizes he’s somehow jerked himself around enough to end up right next to the bars. He blinks, taking about five seconds to remember that he physically shouldn’t be here. 

He looks back at the wall, only to find the chain tying him there on the floor in tatters. He didn’t move for a good 30 seconds, trying to process how he managed to pull that off considering how his muscles felt little better than jelly. 

The memory of the box flashed through his mind. He immediately scanned the area for it, grabbing desperately at the floor below him. Eventually, he did grab it, and he brought it up to his face, trying to remember what bump- no, it wasn’t bumps. It was something else that started with a B. He ran through all the words he could recall that started with that letter. 

_ ‘Brick, Build, Branding, Button-’  _

“Button!” he yells out loud, and promptly covers his mouth. There had to be something else here, and now they probably knew that he was awake. He slowly pushes himself off the floor, trying to remember the code he entered to get Tommy to talk. 

The chain is still heavy around his leg, making every step more difficult as he slowly walked towards the open cell door. His legs feel numb from all the sitting. How long had he been sitting? How long had he been here? How-

He shook those thoughts out of his head. He needed to focus on getting out right now. He pushed himself through the door, almost tripping over one of the heaps right outside of it. After regaining his balance, Techno looked over the red-hooded heap, gently pushing it off, only to be met with- 

A face. 

He shrieks, grabbing onto the bars of the cell as he fully processes what he had just seen. A corpse. A corpse, with its face stuck in a pose of screaming and agony. It’s eyes were still wide open, wide and dilated, no doubt in pain. There was a claw mark embedded in it’s chest, with three wounds bleeding profusely. Techno barely managed to swallow down the bile building within his throat. 

He looked around the room again. There were three down here, at least. He was surrounded by dead bodies. 

Suddenly, the cage didn’t seem so bad anymore. 

Techno took a deep breath as he dragged himself over to the doorway, trying his best not to look at the other bodies in the room. The thought that the killer was still around here scared him more than anything else. 

He (very messily) shoves his body against the doorway, pushing through it, only to be met with a staircase with another red sack at the top. 

God, how many people had died here?

_ Why wasn’t he one of them?  _

It caught him off guard, but the realization that he of all people had been spared threw him off. Unless he was moved to the cell after the bodies were put there, the killer had to have seen him. Why did they spare him? 

He drags himself up the stairs and does his best to ignore the body right next to him as the questions ran rampant through his mind. The hallway above was much less dungeon like, with tiled floors (unsurprisingly covered in blood, but still) and lightbulbs rather than the medieval torches from below. 

The chain seems to weigh even more now, and at this point he’s desperate to just lay down and fall asleep again. To forget the world, forget the mysteries and just make it stop. 

_ “Please, please just stop-” _

The pain returns again, though it’s much more diluted, thankfully. He doesn’t keel over onto the floor again, simply leaning onto the wall as sparks fly through his nerves and make him want to stop thinking even more. 

He does start moving again, though much more slower, leaning against the wall and looking for something. A door? An opening? Who knows. 

He feels a change from the solid stone walls to a much more flexible wood, and mindlessly pushes through it, nearly falling when the door swings open. He gasps, catching himself on the frame and slowly lifting his head to see a wonderful sight. 

A  _ bed.  _

It’s such a wonderful sight that Techno nearly breaks at the sight of it, nearly faints right then and there. Of course, he has to pick himself back up, and push forward, just a little more, just a little-

He catches a glimpse of himself in a mirror off to the side. He pauses. 

He’s in a white button-down shirt and some black pants, all stained with a bright red of course. He eyes are pure gold, and his hair- 

His hair is short. Shorter than it should be. It barely goes past his chin. It should be longer, shouldn’t it? It feels wrong. 

But, there is a bed right there. And sleeping sounds a lot better than pondering why his hair is gone. 

And so, he collapses onto the bed, relief washing over him as he gives into the pull of tiredness. The covers are warm and welcoming as his mind finally shuts down. 

And in some distant corner of his brain that isn’t strong enough to get him up, he registers a cold hand wrapping around his neck. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> definitly not projecting how tired i am while posting this chapter onto techno nope nope no-
> 
> Thank you for reading! Be sure to leave your thoughts in the comments! Critisim is welcome!


	3. Call

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tommy and Tubbo get a call. They call others. Phil gets a call.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you thought this was just techno angst? you fool, you clown, you absolute buffoon. It's technoangst *and* philza angst! Fun for the whole family!

Phil is moving forward. 

Phil is spending a lot of time on his hardcore world. Phil is continuing to play in MCCs. Phil is interacting with others, wearing a damaged smile, but a smile nonetheless. Phil is moving forward. 

But Phil cannot move on. 

It’s so… strange, in a way. His body is doing things he would normally do, but at the slightest reference to Techno, his mind goes back into that horrid place that echoes his failures and buries every little bit of happiness until it’s crushed under the weight of his sorrow all over again. 

He doesn’t voice this, of course. He doesn’t want to drag anyone else down with him. Tommy and Wilbur have comforted him enough. He should be getting better. He should  _ be  _ better. The others are better, so why isn’t he? 

Techno would not want him to suffer like this. 

Techno enjoyed killing, fighting, and blood sport. Something Phil could never quite understand. But he never enjoyed suffering. He always aimed for a quick death and an even quicker respawn. His teasing, his taunts, his jokes were meant to sting, not stab. And yet he’s hurt Phil in a way that he could never recover from, never fully grow past. 

He wants to blame something,  _ someone.  _ He wants an answer, a target, a victim. He wants to believe that Techno didn’t just up and leave everything he knew behind. He wants to believe that there was some foul play involved, that there was something. Anything. 

And he does get that thing eventually, but it hurts in a completely new way instead. 

At first, some rude, uncaring part of him thinks it’s a prank when Tubbo tells him. He shuts that part up quickly. Tubbo is chaotic, but there’s a huge difference between unpredictable and cruel. But he is worried when he asks for more details, more  _ anything,  _ and Tubbo simply responds  _ ‘I think you need to come over.’  _

Phil has never logged out so fast before. 

He’s already at the world Tubbo and Tommy were playing around in by the time they’re calling Wilbur. Both of the boys have dozens of hack clients open, most likely using this world to test them out before the call. Now, they’ve built a sad wooden shack, a bunch of wires connected to a communicator and the main ‘world controller’ panel. Both of them barely even acknowledge his presence, too busy yelling at Wilbur to get up and log on. 

Wilbur logs on merely minutes later, expression mixed between tired and panicked. 

“So,” the musician starts. “What the fuck is going on?” 

Tubbo sighs, clutching the communicator. “So me and Tommy were messing around with hack clients a little bit, then we got a call from some random player id we didn’t recognize, and when we picked up, Techno responded.” 

Phil holds in his breath. “There’s a ‘but’, isn’t there?”

Tubbo awkwardly scratches the back of his head. “Well… he didn’t remember us.” 

“W-what?” Wilbur stutters out. “He called you, but didn’t remember you?” 

Tommy shrugs, looking off to the side. “It was weird. He didn’t remember Tubbo’s name at all, but after I talked to him for a little bit, he remembered me. It took him a while to remember Hypixel and the potato war as well.”

Phil bites his lip. “He has amnesia?” 

“Not..really?” Tubbo answers, tapping at the panel again. “I mean, he remembered certain descriptions of things. But not the things themselves? The first thing he remembered about Tommy was his hair color.” 

“His hair color was the only thing he knew about TommyInnit. Oh god, he must be high as shit.” 

Phil lets out a chuckle despite himself. “Then what happened?” 

Tubbo and Tommy exchange glances, nonverbally arguing about who to talk next. Eventually, Tommy shrugs. “He said he was chained up somewhere when we asked him where he was. Then we…” Tommy trailed off, staring at the floor. 

“We asked him about the last thing he remembered,” Tubbo finishes. 

“And then?” Wilbur presses, and Phil does his best to mentally prepare himself for the answer. 

“He… he started screaming,” Tubbo finally answered, hands slowly falling from the panel. “He sounded like he was in pain. A lot of pain.” 

“I think he must’ve dropped the comm or something after that, because then the call ended,” Tommy continues, hands balling up into fists. “He sounded like he was getting stabbed or something. It was…” 

Phil gently places his hand on the younger’s shoulder, trying his best to offer what little comfort he can. Tommy flinched a little, but otherwise didn’t react. “It was scary. I’ve never… never heard him scream like that before.” 

Phil’s other hand curled up into a fist. “Did anything else happen?” 

“We tried to call him back, but he never picked up,” Tubbo replies, tapping uselessly on the screen again. “I’ve been trying to track the IP of where the call came from ever since, but the call was so short it’s really hard.”

Phil eyes the communicator again. “What number did he call you from?” 

Tommy gave him an indiginat look. “You really think he’ll pick up for you?” 

Phil gulped, fingering his own communicator. “I… I just want to try.” 

Tommy opens his mouth to say something, but the look he got from the other two quickly shut him up. Phil doesn’t comment on it, too wrapped up in copying the number down onto his own communicator. 

There’s been this strange tension in the air whenever they meet up now. They snap at each other more. The fights start to dance the line between bits and real a lot faster, and a lot more often. Phil knows he should do something about it, but interacting with others is so draining now he can’t be bothered. 

_ ‘God,’  _ he thinks to himself.  _ ‘Is this how Techno felt?’  _

He lets the communicator buzz against his ear as the others start to converse among themselves. He knows this won’t work. He knows that Techno won’t pick up. But he wants to try. He wants to do something, dammit. He’s been feeling useless for six months, and even if this doesn’t do anything, he still- 

_ “Ughm….Hello?”  _

The world itself seems to freeze. 

It takes Phil a few seconds to realize that it wasn’t in fact, the people around him did not say those words, and he did in fact not hallucinate the voice coming out of his communicator. 

“Techno?”

_ “Yeah, I’m here. Who are you?” _

Phil feels like collapsing right then and there. On one hand, Techno doesn’t remember him, which hurts a lot, as expected. But… 

Techno is  _ alive.  _ Alive and tired and his voice sounding the exact same as it did the last time they talked. 

Phil falls to his knees, and Wilbur takes that opportunity to grab the comm out of his hand. 

“Techno, is-is that really you?” 

_ “...Yeah. You’re… different from the guy who just spoke, right?”  _

“I swear-” Wilbur seems caught between celebrating and making various creative threats of physical harm. But he manages to calm himself before Techno can be aware of that. “I’m Wilbur. Wil-bur. You remember me?” 

There’s an audible yawn on the other side.  _ “You’re… the guy who… didn’t you fuck a fish?”  _

Tommy and Tubbo burst out laughing as Wilbur’s face began to heat up. “You- I’ve known you for almost a full 2 years, and  _ that’s  _ the first thing you remember about me?” 

_ “T-tommy… you’re related to… him...right? Is he there with you?”  _

“Uhh…” He looked to Phil, not sure of how to respond. Phil raised his hands in front of him. “Don’t look at me!” he whispered. “I don’t know how to handle this!” 

“Thanks, Dadza,” Wilbur scoffs, before raising his voice again. “Yeah, something like that. More importantly, how are you feeling?” 

_ “Hmgh….Better if I was still napping.”  _

“Excuse me, what?” 

Another silence blankets the room as Techno yawns again. 

_ “I said I’d like to get back to napping.”  _

Phil feels so many emotions rush up into him at once that he grabs the communicator right back. “Techno, I don’t think you’re aware of this but, you’ve been missing for  _ six fucking months. _ I think you’re not gonna get back to napping till we know where you are.” 

_ “...Can I call you back when I wake up?”  _

Phil bites back a mix between a sad laugh and a tired sigh. “You haven’t changed a bit,” he mutters into his hand. There’s a bit of a shuffle on the other side, and Tubbo takes the opportunity to get back to the main controller and relentlessly tap on the screen. 

_ “Fine, fine. What do you need?”  _ Techno asks, still sounding incredibly tired. 

“I...I…” 

It’s strange. This entire time, Phil has been rummaging over what he’d say if he could speak to Techno one more time. And yet, now that he knows the man he’s been chasing after is  _ alive  _ (and taking a fucking  _ nap  _ of all things) the words get lost in his throat, mixing together and coming out as whispered half-sentences and broken stutters. 

Eventually, he settles on “Why are you taking a nap?” 

There’s another pause on the line.  _ “Well, after I woke up again, I managed to break the chain around my leg and climb out of the weird dungeon I was in, then… I climbed up the stairs and found a bedroom and fell asleep and that’s when you started calling me.”  _

That… is a lot to unpack. Phil doesn’t know where to start. “You were in a dungeon?” 

_ “Yeah, I was chained up to a wall in a cage and everything. It was weird. There was a lot of blood and-”  _ Techno goes silent again. Phil takes a deep breath. 

“Techno, is there anyone else in there with you?” 

_ “I…I can’t…”  _

“Can’t what?” 

_ “I’ve haven’t seen anyone who’s alive.”  _

That comes with its own set of fun implications, and Phil’s hand twitches. 

_ “I-I… There were three dead bodies outside my cell. There were some more on the way to the bedroom, but I didn’t count. I wanted to sleep.”  _

The relief he felt has evaporated into thin air. “Techno, do you remember how they got there? Do you recognize them? I-” 

_ “Don’t...hurts…”  _

Everyone in the room is giving him a death glare right now, and it occurs to him that asking about the past is exactly what ended the call the first time. 

“Techno, don’t try and remember if it hurts. Just focus on my voice. We’re gonna get you out of there, ok? It’ll get better, ok?” 

There’s a tired ‘mm-hm’ noise made on the other side, and Phil slightly relaxes. There’s silence for a few moments before there’s some much louder shuffling on the other side, and Phil at first assumes its just Techno trying to get a better position until- 

_ “Uh-who…” _

“...Techno?” 

_ “Something...something’s outside my door. I think-”  _ More shuffling and… clawing? From what little Phil can make out.  _ “Its… it's trying to get in.”  _

Phil’s panic meter goes back up to a hundred and he’s not the only one, judging by the way Wilbur’s sleepy eyes fly open in panic and Tubbo’s incessant clicking on his keyboard gets even faster. “Techno, barricade. Do you have anything to put against the door? Or the handle? Just don’t let it get in, no matter what you do, ok?” 

Techno doesn’t respond, and all Phil can hear is more shuffling mixed in with more clawing and the sound of things being dragged. Some twisted part of him that hates himself starts to imagine that the thing got in, that he just heard his son be dragged out of the room against his will and towards an almost certain death. Thankfully, that part shuts up when Techno picks up the communicator again. 

_ “I...it’s done. It’s still trying to get in-”  _ His point is quickly proven by a loud bang on the other side.  _ “but...I think I’m safe for a little while.”  _

Phil takes a deep breath, putting a hand on Wilbur’s shoulder as a non-verbal way to calm him down as well. “We’ll be over there soon, ok? Just a little longer-”

Tubbo throws his hands up in the air. “I’ve got it! I’ve got the IP!” 

Tommy and Wilbur are by his side in an instant, noting the address to the server while Phil gives the younger a thumbs up. “Techno, we’ll be there as soon as possible. Just hang tight, ok?” 

_ “Ok, I-I don’t really have much of a choice, do I?” _

Phil smiles despite himself. “Do you want me to stay on call or end?” 

_ “S-stay please. I don’t want to be alone with this thing.”  _

And everyone else is already logging out, with Phil barely keeping up. Tubbo’s muttering something about getting banned because of the hack client, while Tommy’s yelling at him to hurry the fuck up, but Phil can’t hear it over the pounding thought in his head that he’ll finally see Techno again. 

(If only he hadn’t been so naive, huh?) 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> techno and phil are soo underused in stories and they have so much potential and i will die on this hill- 
> 
> If you feel like it, please leave a comment expressing your thoughts/theories! I love reading them!


	4. Meet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Techno wakes up again and meets 3 people.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ask and ye shall receive. just a quick heads up though. Constantly asking about when the next update is going to happen can stress people out. I was already working on the next chapter when those types of comments started coming in, but it stressed me out nonetheless. We writers got our own lives too. Sometimes people can lose interest in a fandom, and asking for an update can just push them away even more. I don't want to sound rude or anything, but please keep that in mind!

Techno didn’t really feel alive. His body was screaming at him to go back to sleep, his mind is telling him to stay awake so he doesn’t disappoint the voice on the phone. Which he’s sure he might’ve accidentally hung up on. Wonderful. 

He yawned again, stretching his limbs out despite how boneless they felt. He’d been trying to keep himself vigilante and make as little noise as possible. Whatever had been scratching outside his door may have stopped, but the fear that he wasn’t alone in this place certainly hadn’t let up. Mindlessly, he ran his hand up and down his arm, feeling his frankly pretty rough skin and strange pattern of bumps on the back of his hand-

Wait. 

He looked at the back of his hand, shocked to see a strange symbol practically carved into his skin. It looked like a droplet of something, surrounded by lines leading out to the outer circle. The pattern wasn’t just indents in his skin, but rather indents filled with some weird red substance. 

_ ‘It feels like dried blood,’  _ was his first thought. 

_ ‘How the hell do I know what dried blood feels like?’  _ was his second. 

He continued to run his fingers up and down the strange pattern as he thought it over. He didn’t remember anything of his past life, but he had an inclination that he didn’t have this before. Just like the inclination that his name was Techno, or that his hair should’ve been longer than it was. But that didn’t really tell him much about who he was or what had happened to him to make him forget, and it wasn’t like he was eager to go digging in his brain for answers after the first three times ended painfully. 

But that didn’t leave him much to do other than sit around and make him wait for rescue, which couldn’t have felt more demeaning if it tried. Maybe Techno couldn’t access his own memories of whatever had happened here, but he could still recall things that didn’t relate to it. His name, his hair length, what dried blood felt like… 

But that didn’t tell him much about himself. Memories didn’t seem to come back unless intentionally triggered by something. Looking at something or hearing something or-

“Ah, so it’s this room.” 

Techno froze. 

The voice was coming from the other side of the door. Where he heard the scratching and growling. 

(He really wished he hadn’t hung up.) 

The voice continued. “Sacrifice, I know you’re in there. Don’t think you’re safe just because you’ve hidden yourself behind a few pieces of wood. I will find you. I will get my revenge for everything you’ve done to me.” 

Techno had no clue how to respond to that. He simply stayed there, frozen in place, staring at the door hidden behind the drawer and mirror he had shoved in front of it. 

“Do you hear me, coward?” the voice was angry, that much he could tell. “Do you see this? This havoc you’ve caused? Does it make you feel good? Walking past the people you slaughtered? Was this-” 

The voice stopped its little tyrade, giving Techno a chance to finally move. He looked around, the room practically bare of anything to defend himself with. Maybe if he shattered the mirror…?   
  


“...Did he tell you to do this? Or did you lie to him? Did you lie and say we were evil? That we were trying to harm him? That’s the only way things would've turned out like this. He would've… He never would’ve hurt us otherwise… he absolutely wouldn’t!” A couple of thumps against the door puntucated the end of his speech. 

Techno had no idea what was going on anymore. Who was he talking about? Did he have him confused with someone else? Then again, everyone else was sort of dead. It would be hard to mistake him for someone. His panic was rising and this person clearly wanted him dead. Or something. He honestly could care less at this point. 

As if in response to his panic, the blood indents began to glow. Techno hissed in pain as he felt it practically melt through his skin, burrowing in and making the indents bigger. The glow became brighter and brighter, almost blinding him when he looked at it, and then- 

And then it was gone. And the voice on the other side of the door started screaming. 

Techno found himself staring at the cracks in the door, watching as a red hue filled the hallway. Screams and sounds of metal crashing together filled the air and Techno couldn’t help the deja vu feeling creeping up on him that this had happened before. 

Eventually, the sounds of fighting died down, the red hue gone and the only noise that remained was a soft panting. 

The voice didn’t yell. Didn’t scream back at him. The closest thing to a follow up he got was the soft padding of feet echoing down the hallway. 

Techno silently backed away from the door, opting instead to fall back on the bed. 

What the  _ fuck  _ just happened? 

As if on cue, his body decided that now was a perfect time to get a nap instead of process exactly what happened. That lead-like feeling in his bones returned, much stronger than before. He practically melted right onto the bed. 

His last waking moments were staring at those damned idents, wondering what he had done to deserve this. 

-

It took a while for Techno to realize those weird sounds in the back of his mind weren’t his imagination, they were whispers. 

It took a few minutes for the realization of what that meant kick in. 

At first, he froze, thinking that the voice had returned and was plotting his death. Considering his previous string of luck, it wasn’t that wild of a guess. It was only when two vaguely familiar voices started to fill his ears did he realize what was happening. 

“Phil, I know you’re going through it right now, but if you don’t move out of the way, I can’t do much.” 

“...Sorry. I…” 

Faint shuffling. Techno tried to move his limbs. They’re heavier compared to when he went to sleep. 

The shuffling continues, up to the point where he can hear it next to the bed. 

“You think he’s awake?” 

“Probably not? I mean he did-”

“...here…” was all he managed to get out, pushing himself off the bed, despite the protest of his arms. He pushed his eyes open. 

One man, the one with the deeper voice, had been the one to move right next to the bed. He had a weird hat on, decorated in green and white stripes. His expression was a mix of pain and relief. 

The other person, who seemed a lot younger than the one at his side, looked more bewildered and confused than anything. Techno didn’t really notice much about him, too distracted by the drawer thrown to the side all too easily, and the shattered glass from the mirror scattered all around it. 

“Techno, um… you there?” the younger one asked. He sounded familiar, but not close enough to recall the name. 

“... Not really,” he admitted. He hadn’t really felt in control of his body since he woke up here. 

“It’s fine,” the older one- Phillip, maybe? “Let’s just get out of here. Tubbo, could you call and tell Wilbur and Tommy that we’ve found him? I don’t want to spend any longer than I have to.” 

“Ok, wait- um.” 

Phillip(?) turned to Tubbo. “What?” 

“I thought I had my hand on the power button this whole time… but I was holding down the exit button.” 

“Wh-Tubbo!”

“Phil, I think we’re focusing on the wrong here! I haven’t left yet!” 

“Wh- oh. Right. Wait-” 

Phil reached for his own phone-grey-box thing and tapped on it. Techno could only watch as all the color drained out of his face. 

“...It didn’t work for you either, huh?” 

“....Just call Tommy and Wilbur. We have a lot to sort out.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments, reading them always brigtens my day.


End file.
